


Where Were You When I Was New

by Birdegg



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Astrid Hofferson-centric, Astrid is very used to violence, Canon gives me nothing about Astrid's backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Sibling Death, So I will make my own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 13:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22497115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdegg/pseuds/Birdegg
Summary: Light and airy, she watches her father pat her once on the head. She thinks maybe he’s right, and she’s become a better warrior, because now she doesn’t have secrets or friends that bump against her window. Now she just has her duty.Astrid Hofferson will never forget her duty.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Where Were You When I Was New

**Author's Note:**

> Astrid deserves a backstory, and I came up with one that would create such an angry and determined person.

She’s seven years old and she has her first secret. It’s not a big secret (except it is) it’s just something small, and completely hers. It does not belong to the village, or her parents, or the Hofferson legacy. She’s never had any privacy, never mind something that she only knows.

It’s not a big deal, really. She leaves fish for the cat that comes by her window, and she sometimes gets little treasures back. Shining earrings. Dead mice. 

She’s never seen the kitty, but she imagines it’s a warm colour, cinnamon or orange, with stripes. Sometimes at night she can hear it purring outside her window, but it’s always gone by the time she looks. Maybe it’s shy, like Fishlegs, the strange boy from across the village.

When her father comes back severe and looming, she does not think anything is different. She just wonders which of her siblings has done something wrong this time. She is only a little worried for her, because she is Astrid Hofferson and she’s a prodigy. She can lift heavy weapons, and speaks like an adult, and gets up early to train. So her father always pats her once on the head, and gets mad at the others, and that’s how she can tell she’s the best one.

It turns out, he is mad at nobody, this time. There’s a dragon in the village, and someone’s been feeding it. He looks straight at her and points, and she freezes up. He’s not mad, because her father is reasonable, how was she to know it was a dragon and not a cat?

He’s just disappointed, and she can make up disappointed, he tells her so himself. So she is very prepared when he takes her to one of the empty stables beside the crags, knife in hand and expression set.

She does not expect the little orange dragon, whose purr she recognizes. She thought it was tricking her, and kept everything else out because it was a dumb secret that wasn’t secret for long anyway. But it knows her, and it remembers her voice to, and it yelps and howls to be let free from its ropes.

She looks at her knife and knows it’s not for cutting them free. 

Her dad presses her shoulders and smiles and says that he knows she can do it. Sometimes, she skins animals for food, and once she cut herself doing it. It was surprising, that it was the same flesh the animal had, and the same knife to do it. Astrid Hofferson knows she is a good daughter, and a good Hofferson, and a good Viking. 

She doesn’t cry when the dragon stops its desperate cries, instead she doesn’t feel anything. Light and airy, she watches her father pat her once on the head. She thinks maybe he’s right, and she’s become a better warrior, because now she doesn’t have secrets or friends that bump against her window. Now she just has her duty. Astrid Hofferson will never forget her duty. 

\---

They build her sisters gravestone the same way every other Hoffersons looks. It’s not the way most Vikings go, or how anyone important would, with boats and fire. There are no dates or words onto it, other than the names. She draws her eyes down the mountain side. There are a lot of blue, sharp carved stones.

“Yarrel Hofferson was a true Viking.” Her mother says, and her father nods and pats the stone once. Finally, recognition for the lost daughter, the one who threw herself into voyages and drank too much. Too much fire and not enough ice, she hadn’t gotten it quite right like Astrid had.

There wasn’t much to bury, but they tried their best. A couple limbs was good enough really, and no one felt like going into the building and sawing off more, ash burned body parts. Reason number one not to stand too close to any building during a dragon attack, Astrid supposed.

She leaves when the rest of her family does, and she walks straight back into one of the training courses. It’s for common use, but generally twelve year olds shouldn’t be here. She doesn’t care, and she doesn’t think anyone will stop her.

She works until she cannot physically stand, and she finds enough energy to hate herself for it, and for the few pathetic tears that drip down her face with sweat.

\---

Hiccup has managed to fumble his way into victory. Which is unfair, and the type of thinking she’s trying to get out of. That what he achieved was not hard won. He worked with what he was given in a world that had begrudgingly thrown rejected offerings onto his pile. It was admirable, really.

And she tries not to hate Toothless, either. Or flinch when he comes to sniff her. Hiccup gives her a look like he’s disappointed in her, and she doesn’t have the courage to ask him how to make it up. Toothless seems to understand though, because he never stops eyeing her knives and axes.

Hiccup has something she doesn’t though, and that’s why he wins after years of nothing, nothing, nothing. He smiles and jokes and bumps Toothless with his shoulder and tells her why he wouldn’t kill a dragon.

 _I looked at him and I saw myself_ he says. She wants to ask him what cutting the rope felt like in that moment. She doesn’t.


End file.
